Consumers seeking to reduce their energy consumption may face various difficulties when configuring their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for energy-efficient use. For example, a thermostat may be configured to operate based on a number of different settings or programs. Having to manually configure these settings or programs can be cumbersome for the user. In some instances, thermostats can learn a user's behavior and configure some of these settings or programs automatically. However, such approaches may not determine the best settings or programs for configuring the thermostat for energy efficient use, since the patterns of the user, from which the thermostat learns, may not be the best examples of energy efficient operation.